Steffen Schmidt: The pope committed a sin by being against poverty? Really?!

Thursday

Dec 19, 2013 at 6:42 AM

I laughed out loud when I first read "Why Is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?" written by Harvard Kennedy School economist Lant Pritchet and published by Bloomberg this week.

I laughed out loud when I first read "Why Is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?" written by Harvard Kennedy School economist Lant Pritchet and published by Bloomberg this week.

It was, I thought, one of the best pieces of satire I’d seen for a long time in The Onion. I looked carefully to see if maybe humorist Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker was penning this under a nom de plume. But no, it was an actual Ivy League professor.

My disorientation arose from the opening of his screed, which was so amusing and, might I say, deeply arrogant:

"Pope Francis recently weighed in on the economics of inequality. As a professional in that field, I could respond by detailing his errors of fact and reasoning. Maybe some other time. For now, I think that if the pope can pronounce on economics, then it’s only fair that I — a full-time preacher of economics — should be allowed to opine on his grasp of Christian morality. By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy. The Catholic Church, I had always understood, disapproves of envy, deeming it one of the seven deadly sins."

Pritchet drifts into a deeply disrespectful babble to Pope Francis in which he talks about being envious of someone’s ice cream cone, and the fact that a friend of his was a violent Maoist terrorist in India (we hope the NSA takes a specially close look at the professor) but is now a capitalist, and he shares with us the founders of Google as examples of people of whom we should not be envious because Google is so useful.

His Holiness averred that the suffering of so many who are too poor to live decent lives of dignity seems to have set off the professor, and it looks to me as if he immediately saw visions dancing in his head of confiscations, the French guillotine with rich people’s heads rolling into baskets, and the harsh policies of the Stalinist regime against wealthy farmers.

It’s hard to understand —unless Pritchet listens to Rush Limbaugh all day long — how the professor came to the conclusion that the pope was preaching envy as opposed to opportunity, fairness, compassion and concern about the condition of misery in which too many people live.

I’m pretty sure the pope was also reacting to what has been happening in the United States as the income gap and the "wealth gap" between the poor, working class and the rich continues its three decades of growth in ways that many see as dangerous.

The Economist, hardly a Socialist publication, says, "95 percent of the gains from the (economic) recovery have gone to the richest 1 percent of people, whose share of overall income is once again close to its highest level in a century. The most unequal country in the rich world is thus becoming even more so." How’s that look to you, Professor Pritchet?

In fact, in his paper Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis outlined a philosophy that decries an "idolatry of money" and warns it would lead to "a new tyranny." He worries that capitalism will forget the moral and ethical principles that produce prosperous societies, which can then deliver a massive, optimistic middle class — the bedrock of democracies.

He further warned, "The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor."

Why, even Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, referring to GOP contender and billionaire Mitt Romney, "There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism." Perry was speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity. "Venture capitalism we like," Perry said. "Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he’s going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any."

Could it be that His Holiness was thinking of the negative impact of vulture capitalism when he wrote his very interesting "Apostolic Exhortation," which you can read in full here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/187329248/Pope-Francis-s-Nov-24-2013-Evangelii-Gaudium.

In this season of reflection, celebration and, hopefully, giving, it may be worth looking at what the pope was urging and at the same time pushing back at the likes of Professor Pritchet, who does not seem to have properly understood the spirit of most religions — taking care of one’s brothers and sisters and doing exactly what a good soldier does: Never leave anyone behind.

Steffen Schmidt is a professor of political science at Iowa State University.

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